VOLUME 1, SEPTEMBER 2020 TM JAMBO AFRICA ONLINE - Africa: Services. Products. Channels. JAMBO AFRICA READ ABOUT: AfCFTA office unveiled 19 Our containing COVID-19 social 13 media campaign We pay tribute to Fela Kuti 65 ADB re-elects its President 633 1 Publisher’s Comment brands (products / companies/ countries/ individuals) that have gone through turbulent times * We BRAND POSITION city regions / countries as viable destinations for tourism and investments. Yes, we provide service offerings and not tangible products like “atjaar” and “magwinya”!as our detractors want us to believe that’s all Africa’s small and medium enterprises have to do. Yes, perhaps we should add, we do provide services to appropriately and effectively brand position Jambo “magwinya” and “atjaar” produced by our clients by differentiating them from the run- Hello of-the-mill. Bonjour Olá Unlike Bidvest, South Africa’s international To all our dearest readers and services, trading and distribution company stakeholders. now with a presence in four countries, that like many of us government procure services Welcome to Jambo Africa Online, your first from, they are saved from derogatory label truly authentic pan-African news portal. This of “tenderpreneurship” with which we are platform is aimed at celebrating economic painted black (no pun intended!). These success stories from African countries. We naysayers forget that the name, Bidvest, is a will be promoting packaged investment portmanteau probably formulated from the opportunities. We will also promote Africa’s words: Bid/Bidding and Investments/Investor. service and product brands as we continue to I may be wrong, but how does one explain reap the benefits of the implementation of the conceptualisation of this name without the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement making sense of this? (AfCFTA) which will transform the entire continent into a free trade area. Yes, we don’t have the unqualified financial capital injection from the commercial banks We are a news portal created by Brandhill that continued pouring billions of dollars into Africa (Pty) Ltd - a nation brand and public the loss making Google for nine years, diplomacy agency. As an agency, this is about without closing the tap. This financial us: support was consistently sustained until the company broke even and, furthermore, the * We BRAND products / companies / capital injection continued to build it into individuals (by conducting market research; one of today’s most profitable behemoth it developing & implementing brand strategies) was made to become. * We OPEN GLOBAL MARKET ACCESS for these Here’s the paradox about the celebration of brands (e.g. exporting) Google’s success. They glorify it while vilifying us for using Google’s second known * We RE/ENGINEER THE REPUTATION of service: a gmail.com email. When our less 2 brand conscious clients employ this service, it creates doubt in their brand’s reliability and the quality of their services and products. In short, it knocks their brand equity! Yes these naysayers have selective memory. They conveniently forget Apple, the company which today is world’s most valuable, and many prominent Silicon Valley resident companies started operating in garages. So what is the capital resource at our disposal as Brandhill Africa (Pty) Ltd? THE HUMAN CAPITAL! The company is blessed with exceptionally talented professionals who are geared to make a difference. To this exceptional talent, one plus one don’t equal two, BUT three. Thomas Sankara referred to this kind of crop as endowed with the kind of “madness” that’s driven by “non-conformity... the courage to invent the future!”. The militant Egyptian goddess of the written word, Nawaal el Sadaawi, declared their “creativity starts with disobedience”. Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, concurred by siege from the 1885 Berlin conference on the calling this special crop of people as “the “scramble for Africa”. This was even crazy ones” who “have no respect for the compounded by Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of status quo” as “they push the human race Darkness” that dubbed Africa a dark forward”. Harvard Business Review called continent and most recently in 2018, such “a rebel talent!” President Donald Trump labelled African countries and Haiti as “s**thole countries”. Jambo Africa Online will challenge ancient This, sadly, means the onslaught persists. colonialist nuances about Africa and in a "new normal" put this continent where it According to Simon Anholt, who belongs: the top! This was even acknowled conceptualised the “Nation Brand Index” and by the Time magazine as it declared in its now the “Good Country Index”, brand Africa cover headline: “Africa is rising!” is under siege. He argues that people have known for centuries that a “Made in… ” is This team, dear readers, is inspired by, and just as powerful as a “Made by…”. In line embodies, these revolutionary texts! The with this, Germany is known for its impulse driving this team is that Brand Africa engineering, France for chic, Japan for must go to New places physically and miniturisation; Italy for flair; Sweden for imaginatively. design; Britain for class; Switzerland for precision; and Africa for famine, disease and The passion is fired by an insatiable desire to terror. rewrite the long held colonial script on Africa. Brand Africa has always been under This has to change, argues the Jambo Africa 33 Online team, and they are the crusaders for such a strategic intervention. The team therefore invited you to join this progressive movement. PUBLISHING This piece doesn’t only launch this news portal, but it’s the first in a series of articles Editor: Tshepo Ikaneng which will propagate the brand re- engineering of Africa, her products and Sub-Editor (acting): Saul Molobi services, by increasing their affinity among her people and the global community of Editorial Correspondent/s: Mandla Zibi nations. Fellow Africans, Jambo Africa Online has a duty to provide narratives that are Country Representatives: Vacant informative, explorative and unavoidable. Multimedia Productions: Exploring Africa with us is, therefore (without being instructive), your duty. Tshepo Ikaneng (Podcasts) We are inspired by Pliny the Elder’s Mara Mbele (Photography) prophetic quote: “Ex-Africa semper aliquid novi.” Indeed, out of Africa, something Simba Mdena (Videography) Selemogo Maleho refreshing always comes out. We hope, dear (Graphic Design) reader, you will find this news portal intellectually refreshing and engaging. Malose Mahapa (Webmaster) We don’t pretend to compete with anyone Publisher: Saul Molobi already in the media industry since our brand is differentiated from all as we’re the first CORPORATE SERVICES news portal dedicated solely to promoting Africa as a free trade area. So we envisage ourselves complementing and advancing Chief Executive Officer: Saul Molobi what they’re already doing. Executive Head - Marketing: It’s for this reason that we are forging Andile Msindwana strategic partnerships with a number of companies - such as Len Kalane’s PIE Digital Social Media Manager: Buhle Mnguni Media (Pty) Ltd. Executive Head - Special Projects: Words aren’t adequate to express how Yolanda Basson grateful we are to you, our reader - the life blood of this news portal - to have set aside Executive Head - Advertising & Sales: some time from your busy schedule, to join us on this journey. Nardine Nelson Subscriptions & Databases: Mpho Molobi Enjoy the ride. Administration and Management: Saul Molobi Publisher Brandhill Africa (Pty) Ltd Corporate Social Investment: Brandhill Africa Foundation NPC 44 RRememberingemembering FELAFELA By Mandla Zibi 5 He was the strange one, the weird one, he after a long, crazy build-up, I just couldn't called himself 'Abami Edo'. His followers stop weeping with joy. It was a very sometimes called him the Black President. moving experience.' He was once described as Bob Marley and Che Guevara rolled into one. But According McCartney then floated the idea of to a prominent New York City museum recording with some of Fela's musicians, director, for over thirty years, until 10 but when Fela caught wind of this, he years ago, the "most important cultural denounced McCartney from the stage for figure in Africa in the past 100 years" was trying to steal black music. virtually unknown in America outside of the African-American community. Variously called a musical visionary, rebel extraordinaire, pan-African revolutionary, Which is not surprising, given the kind of polygamist, prodigious dope smoker and a artist Fela Anokulapo Kuti was, and the slew of other epithets both good and bad, cultural/artistic ideas he espoused. Unlike Fela in many ways was Marley, his songs could last anywhere from hard to define. What is certain though is 15 minutes to an hour, which rendered his that Fela the inventor of Afrobeat (a music very radio unfriendly. Asked once by potent brew of jazz, American funk and a Western journalist why he could not traditional Yoruba rhythm); when few were record a three-minute track, he replied prepared to speak up for the downtrodden that it was impossible for him. Anyway, he and dehumanized in late 20th century retorted, could anyone ask that of Nigeria, he threw all caution to the wind Beethoven? and called the monster by its true name, to its face. For that, he paid a heavy price: The Guardian Newspapers's Peter Culshaw harassed, beaten and tortured by the says in the 1980's Motown wanted to set up authorities, he was jailed more than 200 an African label and the company offered times. Fela a million-dollar deal. This despite his stubborn refusal to play old material, Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun which would ensure that live audiences Ransome-Kuti in 1938 in Abeokuta, a small would never hear his hits. Writes Culshaw: town north of Lagos, the former capital. "Rikki Stein, one of [Fela's] then managers, His family is described as upper middle was hugely excited and flew to Lagos to class: his father was an Anglican priest, as discuss the deal.